Audrey Utley is on the way out, presumably on an inside track to becoming the next superintendent at neighboring Steelton-Highspire.

The latest development is a setback for Harrisburg, where one of the elected board’s first acts last week was naming Utley, who served as superintendent of the Middletown Area School District from 2002 through 2007, to continue as acting superintendent at $160,000 per year.

Utley said in an interview Friday she has informed members of the Harrisburg school board that she will step down on or before July 31. Utley said she is leaving for another local position in education, which she would not identify because the hiring has not been finalized.

But Samuel Petrovic, president of the Steelton-Highspire School Board, said Utley is a finalist for the open superintendent position.

“Nothing has officially been done,” Petrovic said, but he said action could come at the next board meeting in early August, or a special meeting could be called.

The Steelton-Highspire seat opened June 24, when Superintendent Deborah L. Wortham told the board she was resigning to care for her ailing husband.

Now Harrisburg’s board will have to pick another top officer — the district’s fourth this year — while it conducts a search for a permanent leader. Utley replaced Assistant Superintendent Sybil Knight-Burney, who served as acting superintendent from March 15 through May 17.

“It’s a disappointment, because we thought we had that taken care of,” Harrisburg board President Lola Lawson said, adding the board will meet this month to draw up a list of candidates to serve as the next city schools’ chief.

Director Randy King, however, made a pitch Friday to reinstate former Harrisburg Superintendent Gerald Kohn, who was dumped from his position in March by Mayor Linda Thompson’s appointed board of control.

Kohn has publicly contested the dismissal — which the Thompson board did under a little-tested provision of the state’s Education Empowerment Act — and as recently as this week renewed threats to take legal action to enforce his contract that runs through July 2011.

“Jerry is here and available and ready to go back to work, and eventually I can assure you he will get paid whether he works or not,” Kohn’s attorney, Walter Cohen, said in a recent meeting with The Patriot-News’ editorial board. Kohn’s salary this year was $235,431.

“If they want to hire somebody else and pay that person too, they can do that. But I think that given the current financial climate in the city and in the state ... that that’s something that people should be aware of,” Cohen said.

King said Harrisburg should bring Kohn back and avoid that fight. But he also said Friday he feels Kohn is best-positioned to give the district continuity and to perhaps tap needed funding sources as the deficit-ridden district moves forward.

“We’ve already taken the required action of not renewing his contract,” King said, referring to a separate board action last week to ensure that Kohn would only be back until his current contract runs out. “This would give us the time and opportunity to conduct a thorough national search.”

Lawson does not support Kohn’s return as superintendent, citing “strong resistance” from state legislators Sen. Jeff Piccola and Rep. Ron Buxton; leaders of the Greater Harrisburg Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; and many administrators and staffers within the district.

Lawson said Kohn accomplished a lot for the district in his eight-and-a-half years at the helm, however. She said she is willing to talk to him about serving in a consulting role in which the district could benefit from his fundraising and lobbying abilities.

But the feedback she is getting from the community as a whole tells her “it’s time now for us to have new leadership at the Harrisburg School District,” Lawson said.

Attempts to reach other Harrisburg directors were not successful.

Utley, 59, said Friday she is not running from the political, fiscal and academic challenges facing Harrisburg. Student test scores, while on the rise, have persistently ranked among the lowest in the state during the 10-year mayoral-control era that ended June 30.

Her only hesitancy about taking the Harrisburg position in May “was just the hesitancy of someone who has been in semiretirement taking on a full-time challenge like that ... ,” Utley said. “But I’ve enjoyed it to the point where I would now consider a long-term employment.”

The Steelton job would mark a homecoming for Utley, too.

Utley grew up in the borough and returned to spend the first 16 years of her teaching career there before leaving to become a building principal in Middletown.

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